Affiliate Faculty —
Ph.D., 2010,
Stanford University

Contact

Interests

20th and 21st century Anglophone fiction, environmental literature and criticism, medical humanites, science/technology and culture, affect studies, data in narrative and new media

Biography

I'm an associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and hold affiliations with American Studies, the Center for Women's and Gender Studies, and the Environmental Science Institute. My degrees are from Stanford University and Reed College. My first book is Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect (Columbia UP, 2014), which won the 2015 Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2014 British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) Book Prize. Ecosickness argues that contemporary fiction uses affect to bring audiences to environmental consciousness through the sick body. I'm working on a new project, titled "Environmental Art and the Infowhelm" for now, that gives an account of the aesthetics of information management across environmental media.

I'm also an associate editor at Contemporary Literature and serve on the editorial board of American Literary History. My essays appear in Modern Fiction Studies (2017), Time: A Vocabulary of the Present (NYU Press, 2016), Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities (Routledge, 2016), Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities (Routledge, 2016),Los Angeles Review of Books (2014 & 2015),American Literary History (2014), Public Culture (2014), American Literature (2012), The Legacy of David Foster Wallace (U of Iowa P, 2012), Contemporary Literature (2010), and American Book Review (2010).

Courses

E 303D • Plan II World Lit Part II

34250 • Spring 2018
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM PAR 210

Description: In this course we will read, think, write, and converse about literature and life, as we survey some innovative and bewildering engagements with the most elemental features of our surroundings: the earth, the sea, and the sky. Our studies in the natures of world literature will feature, among other locations, ancient Greece, Rome, and Persia; modern England, Italy, and France; and contemporary India, Nigeria, Japan, and America. We will traverse genres including poetry, realist fiction, Gothic horror, the bildungsroman, documentary film, anime, the travelogue, the memoir, and science writing. To help develop our literary imaginations and our cross-disciplinary analytic skills, we will familiarize ourselves with campus resources including the Harry Ransom Center, the Blanton Museum of Art, the Perry-Castañeda Library, and James Turrell's Skyspace installation.

Texts: Fiction: tales from The Arabian Nights; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Melville, "Benito Cereno"; Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea; Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher"; Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus; Ghosh, The Hungry Tide; Habila, Oil on Water

N.B.: Students will select most of the texts for Spring 2018 in the fall, based on our course themes and a few other parameters.

Assignments: Students must attend class and participate. Throughout the year, there will be regular blog posts. In the fall, students will write two 3-page essays and a 6-page essay. In the spring semester, students will work on essays of about the same length requiring more collaboration and research. Some of the essays will undergo peer review and revision.

About the Professor:

Heather Houser works on contemporary literature, with an emphasis on the U.S. novel and the environmental humanities. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and majored in English as an undergraduate at Reed College. Along the way, she wrote an undergraduate thesis on Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses; worked odd jobs; lived in France, Italy, and Spain; traveled around Central Europe and Latin America; and received several national fellowships that supported her work on her dissertation & first book, Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect.

E 384K • Scholarly Publication

35235 • Spring 2018
Meets T 2:00PM-5:00PM CAL 323

This course is designed for students prepared to revise a seminar paper, Master's report, or dissertation chapter into a publishable article that they will submit to a peer-reviewed academic journal in Summer 2018. We will demystify the editorial process of academic journals and decode the specialized conventions of the article genre, focusing specifically on the methodological, argumentative, and stylistic moves that successful authors make. Students will develop strategies of "radical revision" to turn their polished essay, report, or chapter into a finely wrought article that makes an identifiable contribution to its field/s. The course will begin with several introductory weeks in which we all read and discuss materials concerned with the process of turning essays into articles and students identify appropriate journals for their essays. Students will then occasionally consult with the professors and work closely in small rotating writing groups as they revise their essays. Admission to the course is by Graduate Adviser approval.

E 395M • American Fiction Now

35870 • Fall 2017
Meets W 5:00PM-8:00PM CAL 419

The title of this course, "American Fiction Now," derives from a book series at Columbia University Press, "Literature Now," which is just one of many efforts (Post45, ASAP, among them) to specify the now of American literary production. The course approaches this task through readings of American novels, short stories, and criticism from the past decade. Emphasis will be on the genres fiction now fuses, the publics fiction now addresses, and the political debates fiction now engages. Rubrics organizing the course may include race relations, climate crisis, the global city, and portraits of home. We will also read recent cultural criticism and examine the interplay between the methodologies and questions literary scholars bring to "the extreme contemporary" and the fiction itself. Possibleauthors: Chris Abani, Lydia Davis, Siri Hustvedt, Marlon James, Maira Kalman, Rachel Kushner, Keise Laymon, Elizabeth McCracken, Lydia Millet, Ruth Ozeki, Jeff VanderMeer, Joy Williams, Nell Zink. Likely assignments: regular blog posts (~250 words), one blog synthesis + class facilitation, short book review, syllabus or other pedagogical document, annotated bibliography, seminar paper (with prospectus and peer-reviewed draft), paper presentation.

E 384K • Scholarly Publication

35670 • Spring 2017
Meets M 4:00PM-7:00PM CAL 200

Scholarly Publications

Heather Houser and Wayne Rebhorn

This course is designed for students prepared to revise a seminar paper, Master's report, or dissertation chapter into a publishable article that they will submit to a peer-reviewed academic journal in Summer 2017. We will demystify the editorial process of academic journals and decode the specialized conventions of the article genre, focusing specifically on the methodological, argumentative, and stylistic moves that successful authors make. Students will develop strategies of "radical revision" to turn their polished essay, report, or chapter into a finely wrought article that makes an identifiable contribution to its field/s. The course will begin with several introductory weeks in which we all read and discuss materials concerned with the process of turning essays into articles and students identify appropriate journals for their essays. Students will then occasionally consult with the professors and work closely in small rotating writing groups as they revise their essays. Admission to the course is by Graduate Adviser approval.

E 303C • Plan II World Lit Part I

34551 • Fall 2016
Meets MW 10:00AM-11:30AM CAL 200

Description: In this course we will read, think, write, and converse about literature and life, as we survey some innovative and bewildering engagements with the most elemental features of our surroundings: the earth, the sea, and the sky. Our studies in the natures of world literature will feature, among other locations, ancient Greece and China, modern England and France, and contemporary India and America. Where genre is concerned, we will traverse what the Greek philosopher Aristotle defined as the three main areas of literary endeavor—lyric poetry, drama, and narrative—while encountering modern forms such as realist novels, science fiction stories, and avant-garde films. To help develop our literary imaginations and our cross-disciplinary analytic skills, we will familiarize ourselves with campus resources including the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the Blanton Museum of Art, the Perry-Castañeda Library, James Turrell's Skyspace installation, and live theater productions.

Texts/Readings/Films:Possibilities for Fall:

Aristophanes, The Clouds; Ballard, Drowned World; Butler, Parable of the Sower; Atwood, The Year of the Flood; Carson, The Sea Around Us or Silent Spring; Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K; Ghosh, The Hungry Tide; Goldman, The Ordinary Seaman; Habila, Oil on Water; Langston Hughes, poems from The Weary Blues; Le Clézio, The Desert; LeGuin, "Vaster than Empires and More Slow"; Lucretius, De rerum natura; Maathai, Unbowed: A Memoir; Spahr, This Connection of Everyone with Lungs; Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus.

Possibilities for Fall or Spring:

Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; Hayes, The Rime of the Modern Mariner; James Cook, Voyages; Jacques Cousteau, The Silent World; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Melville, "Benito Cereno"; Ovid, Metamorphoses; Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket; Lisa Robertson, The Weather; Ruskin, "The Storm-Cloud of the 19th Century"; Petrarch, various sonnets and "The Ascent of Mount Ventoux"; Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea; Virgil, Eclogues and Georgics; modern pastoral and georgic poetry by Heaney and others.

Varda, The Gleaners and I; Kiarostami, The Wind Will Carry Us; von Trier, Breaking the Waves or Melancholia; Miyakazi, Princess Mononoke; Reidelsheimer, Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers and Tides; Walker, Waste Land; Herzog, Encounters at the End of the World

Assignments/Requirements: Students must attend class and participate. There will be regular brief writing assignments and quizzes, a series of short (2-3 page) essays, and more substantial (5 page) papers. Some of the essays will undergo peer review and revision.

About the Professors:

Heather Houser (Fall 2016) works on contemporary literature, with an emphasis on the U.S. novel and the environmental humanities. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and majored in English as an undergrad at Reed College. Along the way, she wrote an undergraduate thesis on Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses; worked odd jobs; lived in France, Italy, and Spain; traveled around Central Europe and Latin America; and received several national fellowships that supported her work on her dissertation & first book, Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect.

Samuel Baker (Spring 2017) specializes in the study of British literature, in particular “Romantic” literature from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was a Comparative Literature major as an undergraduate at Columbia University and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. In addition to his academic pursuits, he has worked in publishing and in the museum world. His first book, Written on the Water: British Romanticism and the Maritime Empire of Culture, appeared in 2010; more recently he has been developing a media theory of gothic literature.

35505 • Fall 2016
Meets MW 11:30AM-1:00PM PAR 306

Prerequisites: Enrollment in or completion of at least one honors section of an English course, admission to the English Honors Program, and consent of the honors adviser.

Description: According to the Honors Thesis Manual, a thesis is “a sustained examination of a central idea or question, developed in a professional and mature manner under the guidance of a faculty supervisor and a second reader.” That sounds easy enough, but how does one get there from here? This course offers a roadmap. Over the course of the term we will examine literary criticism from the “inside out” and hone skills essential to a successful honors thesis.

Along the way, we will address a number of questions, both practical—How do I use the MLA Bibliography? What’s the difference between a footnote and an endnote?—and theoretical—What does it mean to make an argument about literature? Who has authority in an act of interpretation? This course will: first and foremost prepare students to write an honors thesis; interrogate methods of literary and cultural interpretation; consider what it means to make literary arguments and conduct literary research; help students to improve their research, critical thinking, reading, and writing skills.

E 395M • Environmental Criticism

34960 • Spring 2016
Meets T 5:00PM-8:00PM CAL 200

This course will introduce students to the questions, methods, and materials that have shaped the development of environmental criticism (a.k.a. ecocriticism) since its emergence in the 1990s. Students will build a vocabulary for the study of environmental literature and media as they discover the history and futures of the field. We’ll focus on key concepts such as wilderness, risk, and biopolitics and their function in approaches central to ecocriticism and the environmental humanities more generally: ecofeminism, environmental justice, science studies, and animal studies, among other. We’ll begin with debates about the meaning of “nature” and the tension between social construction and realism. The course will then investigate environmental critics’ and writers’ stances on urban, scientific, and technological development; the place of social justice in environmental dilemmas; and evolving understandings of the boundary between the human and nonhuman.

Students will write in multiple genres (blog, book review, annotated bibliography, seminar or conference paper with prospectus) and put their papers through peer review. They’ll facilitate discussion and present their final projects in an in-class or department-wide symposium.

34670 • Fall 2015
Meets MWF 1:00PM-2:00PM MEZ 1.208

Prerequisites: Enrollment in or completion of at least one honors section of an English course, admission to the English Honors Program, and consent of the honors adviser.

Description: According to the Honors Thesis Manual, a thesis is “a sustained examination of a central idea or question, developed in a professional and mature manner under the guidance of a faculty supervisor and a second reader.” That sounds easy enough, but how does one get there from here? This course offers a roadmap. Over the course of the term we will examine literary criticism from the “inside out” and hone skills essential to a successful honors thesis.

Along the way, we will address a number of questions, both practical—How do I use the MLA Bibliography? What’s the difference between a footnote and an endnote?—and theoretical—What does it mean to make an argument about literature? Who has authority in an act of interpretation? This course will: first and foremost prepare students to write an honors thesis; interrogate methods of literary and cultural interpretation; consider what it means to make literary arguments and conduct literary research; help students to improve their research, critical thinking, reading, and writing skills.

Description: This course surveys American comics and other graphic narratives (GNs) as a form of literature. We will begin at mid-20th century with the "Golden Age" of superhero/ine comics and then move into the contemporary period when GNs become a reputable literary art form. Students will learn methods of literary analysis as they apply to the hybrid image-text genres of GN and practice those methods in conversation and in frequent informal and argument-based writing assignments. We will focus on the formal features of GNs; how to read the verbal and the visual; the different media in which comics appear (strip, book, and online); and how GNs respond to social, political, and cultural changes in the U.S.

The primary aim of this course is to develop and improve the critical reading, writing, and thinking skills needed for success in upper-division courses in English and other disciplines. Students will also gain practice using online research tools and print resources that support studies in the humanities. They will learn basic information literacy skills and models for approaching literature with various historical, generic, and cultural contexts in mind.

This course contains a writing flag. Writing assignments are arranged with a focus on invention, development through instructor and peer feedback, and revision; they will comprise a major part of the final grade.

Requirements & Grading: 20% participation, 10% blog posts, 40% short papers (including mandatory revisions), 30% final writing project, which may require working as part of a team. The class is a discussion-based seminar and attendance is mandatory.

34965 • Spring 2015
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM GAR 3.116

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: What is U.S. fiction now? How does postmodernism fit into our story of literary production since 1960? How is contemporary fiction in dialogue with social, technological, and political developments of the past 50 years? These questions will guide the course, and we'll answer them by examining American novels and film from the 1960s to the present. We'll begin with works in the canon of literary postmodernism and define for ourselves what this elusive but pervasive cultural concept means. The majority of the course then traverses less charted terrain: the contemporary. We'll consider innovations in storytelling that have emerged over the past decades. Throughout the course, we'll cross novelistic genres and engage issues central to post-1960 fiction: technological and media change, pop culture, globalization, and forms of memory/forgetting and belonging/alienation.

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Environmental change is everyone's concern, but populations in different parts of the world—and, indeed, within the U.S.—bear different burdens associated with it. This course approaches the environmental issues facing nations and individuals through novels, memoirs, and film from North America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. We will examine fiction as a unique form of environmental inquiry that:

uses age-old narrative forms such as fantasy, realism, the coming-of-age story, and science fiction to stage environmental and social dilemmas.

A central question of the course is how the books and films balance human justice, especially for the poor, and the welfare of the more-than-human world.

We begin by studying the place of nature and social justice in "First World" environmentalism and "the environmentalism of the poor" since the mid-20th century. We then focus on literature and film of the past thirty years, when globalization, resource extraction, technology, and environmental risks have spread in tandem. Possible units on food systems and politics, waste and toxicity, climate change, and resource wars. Across these topics we'll be concerned with how artists use narrative strategies, images, and generic conventions to shape global environmental consciousness.

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: This course covers the truncated career of David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), one of the most obsessed-over and lauded authors of his generation. We will read some of Wallace's essays and short stories, and all of Infinite Jest. The following questions will motivate the course: 1. What is Wallace's place in US literary history? What is his project for a new fiction? 2. What are his polemics about 20th-century US culture and media forms? Can particular novels and reading practices intervene in these domains? 3. How can fiction enter and change our lives?

We will avail ourselves of the Harry Ransom Center's rich Wallace archive which includes his manuscripts, letters, and personal library. The course culminates in a final project of the student's own design. Students are encouraged to use HRC resources in developing their project questions but are not required to do so.

Texts:Infinite Jest, and selections from Broom of the System, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Consider the Lobster, Oblivion, Girl with Curious Hair, and The Pale King.

Description: What is U.S. fiction now? What are the recent literary traditions and social and cultural changes with which it's in dialogue? These questions will guide the course, and we'll answer them by examining American novels and short stories from the 1960s to the present. We'll begin with works in the canon of literary postmodernism and define for ourselves what this elusive but pervasive cultural concept means. The majority of the course then traverses less charted terrain: the contemporary. We'll consider the legacies of postmodernism and innovations in storytelling that have emerged over the past decades. Throughout the course, we'll cross novelistic genres and engage issues central to post-1960 fiction: technological and media change, pop culture, globalization, and forms of memory/forgetting and belonging/alienation.

E 395M • The Postmodern Novel & Beyond

35880 • Spring 2013
Meets M 6:00PM-9:00PM PAR 210

This course will introduce students to theories and practices of US postmodern fiction and will develop an account of where US fiction stands now. The first part of the course will focus on the formal and thematic signatures of American "high" postmodernism of the 1960s and 1970s as well as the social, cultural, and technological developments it engages. We'll then read up to the present and assess how contemporary fiction carries postmodernism's legacy forward and how it innovates other ways of storytelling. To concentrate our inquiry, we'll examine works that don't only present worlds but that also theorize how we come to know our worlds (rationality and empiricism, affect, the body, place, religion, historical and cultural memory, media and technology).

Prerequisites: Six semester hours of upper-division coursework in English.

Description: This course covers the truncated career of David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), one of the most obsessed-over and lauded authors of his generation. We will read some of Wallace's essays and short stories, and all of Infinite Jest. The following questions will motivate the course: 1. What is Wallace's place in US literary history? What is his project for a new fiction? 2. What are his polemics about 20th-century US culture and media forms? Can particular novels and reading practices intervene in these domains? 3. How can the novel and the individual navigate the onslaught of information in the 20th/21st centuries?

We will avail ourselves of the Harry Ransom Center's rich Wallace archive which includes his manuscripts, letters, and personal library. The course culminates in a final project of the student's own design. Students are encouraged to use HRC resources in developing their project questions but are not required to do so.

Texts:Infinite Jest. Possible selections from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, and Girl with Curious Hair, and The Pale King. Short critical readings and prose comparisons.

35520 • Spring 2012
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM PAR 302

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Environmental criticism—or, ecocriticism—is a vibrant area of literary scholarship that seeks to understand the cultural origins of environmental relations and responses to ecological threat. This course starts from the premises that 1) to understand emerging environmental issues, we must look beyond facts and data to the stories that literature tells and 2) to understand contemporary cultural production, we must analyze texts' environmental imagination. Thus, we'll explore the role of fiction—on page and screen—in creating environmental consciousness in the late 20th and 21st centuries. As we develop a critical vocabulary for interpreting recent eco-fiction, we'll sort out recent trends in environmental representation and criticism.

The following questions motivate our study: How do the ways that stories are narrated affect understanding of environmental issues? Are there more or less "successful" genres and formal strategies for addressing eco emergencies? What stance do contemporary authors take towards scientific developments? Towards activism? How do writers and filmmakers balance the demands for human justice and the welfare of ecosystems? Students will explore these questions and others in seminar discussions, and informal and formal writing assignments, including a self-defined research project.

E 379R • Environmntl Fiction/Criticism

35517 • Fall 2011
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM PAR 302

Prerequisites: Nine semester hours of coursework in English or rhetoric and writing.

Description: Environmental criticism—or, ecocriticism—is a vibrant literary research area that seeks to understand the cultural origins of environmental relations and responses to ecological threat. This course will introduce you to the cultural and political contexts within which recent environmental thinkers have defined "nature" and expanded our understanding of the environment. Debates about whether to embrace or reject modernization and science, and about the proper modes for mediating the environment inform ecocriticism. We will analyze the terms and stakes of these debates along with the currents that cut across them: gender, race, and class positioning; the category of the human vis-à-vis the machine and animal; post- and neocolonialism; and urbanism.

The following questions motivate our study: How do literature, film, and cultural theory shape environmental issues? Are there more or less "successful" narrative strategies for addressing environmental decline? How do eco-thinkers and -artists balance the demands for human justice and the welfare of ecosystems? Students will develop a critical vocabulary for the study of environmental fiction as they sort out the history and futures of environmental representation.